Sony Store in Canada

[mrhaines]

So I just received the following email from the Sony Book Store"

Dear Fellow Reader

We at the Reader™ Store realize that select eBook titles are currently unavailable in Canada. We apologize for the inconvenience. Due to recent changes in the publishing industry, we are temporarily unable to offer certain titles in Canada.

However, we are committed to providing you access to the widest selection of digital reading content and are working to resolve the issue as soon as possible. We hope to have new releases, bestsellers, and all your favorite eBook titles available for your reading pleasure.

Thank you for your patience and we appreciate your choosing the Reader™ Store.

Your Friends at the Reader™ Store

It is unbelievable to me how the publishing industry seems to be actively pushing people away from accessing legal content by raising prices and creating ridiculous publishing laws. How do they expect to keep a customer base if they piss us off with stupid things like this?

[neilmarr]

Don't tar all publishers with the same brush, Mr Haines. And don't let Sony and the other major new online ebook stores off the hook so lightly.

Ask them, for instance, why they all flatly refuse to accept titles from publishers without an 'official' US presence and why (on the odd occasion that they do) they slap geographical restrictions on books on which those publishers hold international rights on everything from hardback to paperback to all ebook formats.

My own small independent is based in Canada and we are now forced to open a US office (just a lawyer, an accountant, a bank account, an address and a tax number -- all expensive smoke and mirrors, but legal) to get through the doors of these stores. What ebook stores will carry our titles often will not sell them to customers in the very country where they were written and/or produced.

Good to have your new comany, by the way. Best wishes. Neil

[mrhaines]

Thats good info...

So basically it is a disagreement about who gets paid for what? Maybe this is just one of those thigns that comes up in a new industry. Its frustrating that Canadians always seem to suffer though.

[velvet]

I agree. Why they are doing that?

[neilmarr]

There's a simple Occam's Razor solution that none of the big stores can be bothered with ... they need only open sales websites in ALL countries where their devices are on sale and sell the publishers' 'local' editions from those sites. Too easy? Neil

[Lemurion]

Ah, Canada - where you get some books from the US publisher and others from the UK publisher. That always makes for a mess with rights because you can't take either of the other two lists and work from that.

[SensualPoet]

Ah, Canada - where you get some books from the US publisher and others from the UK publisher. And, in the case of Louise Penny, a Canadian author, you can buy her e-books in the US and UK but NOT in Canada. (But all the same titles are available in paper.) Arrgghhhh!

I received that e-mail from Sony Canada as well although I don't own a Sony e-reader (I have installed the store software); I think I may have downloaded one free title from them once to see the quality of the so-called "1 million Google books".

[Blue Tyson]

Originally Posted by neilmarr

There's a simple Occam's Razor solution that none of the big stores can be bothered with ... they need only open sales websites in ALL countries where their devices are on sale and sell the publishers' 'local' editions from those sites. Too easy? Neil

That would require the seppos notice that other countries exist, Neil. Not something they do that often.

[ficbot]

Originally Posted by SensualPoet

Ah, Canada - where you get some books from the US publisher and others from the UK publisher. And, in the case of Louise Penny, a Canadian author, you can buy her e-books in the US and UK but NOT in Canada. (But all the same titles are available in paper.) Arrgghhhh!

Yeah, neither Kobo nor Sony would sell me Margaret Atwood (who is so Canadian she lives down the street from my parents). But Waterstones UK was happy to take my Canadian money so I could buy my Canadian book. Go figure.